In 1453 when the last vestige of ancient Roman power fell to the Turks, the city officially shifted religions -- although the Patriarch, or Pope, of the Orthodox Church continued to live there, and still does -- and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Going through the Imperial Gate in the wall, I entered the grounds of Topkapi Palace, home of the Sultans and nerve center of the vast Ottoman Empire, and walked along a road toward another gate in the distance, past the Church of St. Irene, completed by Constantine in 330 A.D. on my left, and then, just outside the second gate, I saw a spring with a tap in the wall on my right -- the Executioner's Spring, where he washed his hands and his sword after beheading his victims.

The Aegean Sea was later invaded by the Persians and the Romans, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarians, the Venetians, the Genoeses, the Seljuq Turks, and the Ottoman Empire.

The Anatolian beyliks were in turn absorbed into the rising Ottoman Empire during the 15th century.

With the beginning of the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century, and as a result of the expansionist policies of Czarist Russia in the Caucasus, many Muslim nations and groups in that region, mainly Circassians, Tatars, Azeris, Lezgis, Chechens, and several Turkic groups left their ancestral homelands and settled in Anatolia.

As the Ottoman Empire further fragmented during the Balkan Wars, much of the non-Christian populations of its former possessions, mainly the Balkan Muslims, flocked to Anatolia and were resettled in various locations, mostly in formerly Christian villages throughout Anatolia.

Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until the early 20th century ( see the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire ).

* 1921 – The British install the son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali ( leader of the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Ottoman Empire ) as King Faisal I of Iraq.

* 1903 – Fall of the Ottoman Empire: an unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden – Preobrazhenie Uprising, takes place.

* 1664 – The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.

* 1687 – Battle of Mohács: Charles of Lorraine defeats the Ottoman Empire.

Ahmed I ( Ottoman Turkish: احمد اول Aḥmed-i evvel, ) or Ahmed Bakhti ( April 18, 1590 – November 22, 1617 ) was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1603 until his death in 1617.

Category: Infectious disease deaths in the Ottoman Empire

Ahmed II Khan Ghazi ( Ottoman Turkish: احمد ثانى Aḥmed-i < u > s </ u > ānī ) < span dir =" ltr ">( February 25, 1643 – February 6, 1695 )</ span > was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1691 to 1695.

Only a few weeks after his accession the Ottoman Empire sustained a crushing defeat at the Battle of Slankamen from the Austrians under Margrave Louis William of Baden and was driven from Hungary.

Ahmed III ( Ottoman Turkish: احمد ثالث Aḥmed-i < u > s </ u > āli < u > s </ u >) < span dir =" ltr ">( December 30 / 31, 1673 – July 1, 1736 )</ span > was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and a son of Sultan Mehmed IV ( 1648 – 87 ).

The subsequent Ottoman victories against Russia enabled the Ottoman Empire to advance to Moscow, had the Sultan wished.

However, this was halted as a report reached Constantinople that the Safavids were invading the Ottoman Empire, causing a period of panic, turning the Sultan's attention away from Russia.

The recovery of Azov and the Morea, and the conquest of part of Persia, managed to counterbalance the Balkan territory ceded to the Habsburg Monarchy through the Treaty of Passarowitz, after the Ottoman Empire was defeated in Austro-Turkish War of 1716-18.

He is generally considered a world conquest military genius, given his successful strategy: he attempted to close all the Indian Ocean naval passages to the Atlantic, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and to the Pacific, transforming it into a Portuguese mare clausum established over the Ottoman power and their Muslim and Hindu allies .< ref >

Almost all of Bulgaria's 500, 000-man standing army was positioned against these two countries, on two fronts – western and southern, while the borders with Romania and the Ottoman Empire were left almost unguarded.

In the Ottoman Empire, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for example, had de facto administrative, fiscal, cultural and legal jurisdiction, as well as spiritual, over all the Christians of the empire.

After five centuries, the Ottoman Empire lost virtually all of its possessions in the Balkans.

When the revolt broke out, it was supported by intellectuals, the army, and almost all the ethnic minorities of the Empire, and forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to re-adopt the long defunct Ottoman constitution of 1877, ushering in the Second Constitutional Era.

However, not long after, Yeshaq revolted once again with Ottoman support but was defeated once and for all in 1578, leaving the Ottomans with domain over Massawa, Arqiqo and some of the nearby coastal environs, which were soon transferred to the control of Beja Na ' ibs ( deputies ).

With the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick in September / October 1697, the desultory war in the west was finally brought to an inconclusive end, and Leopold I could once again devote all his martial energies into defeating the Ottoman Turks in the east.

The Bulgarian imperial title " Tsar " was adopted by all Bulgarian monarchs up to the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman rule.

Its allies, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, surrendered ; all three empires were dissolved as the Allies achieved victory in November 1918 and occupied Germany.

At the least, fifteen per cent of all Hungarian personal arms bear a severed Turk's head, referring to their wars against the Ottoman Empire.

The majority of Greeks continued to live under Ottoman rule, and Greeks dreamed of liberating them all and reconstituting a state embracing all the Greek lands, with Constantinople as its capital.

Iberia in the seventh century, the Crusades which began in the eleventh century, then for centuries the Ottoman Empire, were all fields of war between Europe and Islam.

During Ottoman times, the Mevlevi produced a number of notable poets and musicians, including Sheikh Ghalib, Ismail Rusuhi Dede of Ankara, Esrar Dede, Halet Efendi, and Gavsi Dede, who are all buried at the Galata Mewlewī Khāna ( Turkish: Mevlevi-Hane ) in Istanbul.

The treaty also let the States acquire, without payment, all the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire situated within their territory.

Ottoman Turks converted nearly all churches, monasteries, and chapels in Constantinople, including the famous Hagia Sophia, immediately after capturing the city in 1453 into mosques.

This had serious negative consequences at all levels of Ottoman society.

In 1856, the Hatt-ı Hümayun promised equality for all Ottoman citizens regardless of their ethnicity and religious confession ; which thus widened the scope of the 1839 Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane.

The Ottoman Turks blocked all land routes to Europe by conquering the city of Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, and Europeans had to find other ways to trade with Eastern countries.

Not all Ottomans were Muslims and not all Ottoman Muslims were Turks, but by 1923 the majority of people living within the borders of the new Turkish republic identified as Turks.

In his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ( 1821, p. 188 ), it is still about Ottoman, not Chinese, addicts that Thomas de Quincey writes: " I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had.

The Shah also promised to cease all raids into Ottoman territory.

Once appointed admiral-in-chief, Barbarossa was charged with rebuilding the Ottoman fleet, to such an extent that the Ottoman navy equalled in number those of all other Mediterranean countries put together.